Data Management

Need for DataManager #

Oftentimes, we will be using some static test data that is specific to an environment. The environment could be staging, production, development, etc. For maintaining the environment, we can have a separate class for managing that. This allows us to manage test data in an environment-agnostic way.

Creating DataManager #

We can store the test data in any file format. For demonstration purposes, .properties file is considered.

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Properties;

public class DataManager {

	private static final Properties PROPERTIES = new Properties();

	private static final String ENV = ConfigurationManager.getInstance().getProperty("env");

	private DataManager() throws IOException {
		PROPERTIES.load(getInputStream("env-test-data.properties"));
	}

	private static DataManager manager;

	public static DataManager getInstance() {

		if (manager == null) {
			synchronized (ConfigurationManager.class) {
				if (manager == null) {
					try {
						manager = new DataManager();
					} catch (IOException e) {
					}
				}
			}
		}
		return manager;
	}

	public String getString(String name) {
        String key = ENV + "." + name;
		return System.getProperty(key, PROPERTIES.getProperty(key));
	}

	private InputStream getInputStream(String file) {

		try {
			List<URL> urls = Collections.list(Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResources(file));
			return urls == null || urls.isEmpty() ? null : urls.get(0).openStream();
		} catch (IOException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
		return null;
	}
}

In the above code snippet, we are:

• creating a singleton instance of DataManagerclass in the getInstance method.
• reading properties file from src/test/resources/env-test-data.properties in the constructor of the class.
• fetching the property key’s value from the System.properties. If not present, then fetch from the properties from src/test/resources/env-test-data.properties. This gives us the flexibility to override the properties from the command line as well.

Creating a test data file #

env-test-data.properties should to be created under src/test/resources, as it is a test resource, so that it can be read from classpath when running the test suite.

stage.user_email = test_user@example.com

prod.user_email = test_user@example.com

Here, we prefix the test data key with the environment and set their respective values.

Usage #

Assuming env (or an environment that is passed as configuration from command line as -Denv=stage) is set to some value and the respective values exist in src/test/resources/env-test-data.properties in the format expected and discussed previously, we can access the value of the env test data using the following code.

String userEmail = DataManager.getInstance().getString("user_email");

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In the next lesson, we will learn how to put all the concepts learned till now and design a complete UI framework.